Brett King on Beyond Branches: Preparing to Launch Movenbank

“The incumbents almost never survive technology disruption. Look at Borders, Blockbuster. Now it is coming to banking,” said Brett King, a kickoff speaker at Sibos, an event hosted by innovation expert Innotribe in Toronto that looks at the future of financial services.

A prolific financial services blogger-thinker, King was there to announce Movenbank, an innovative retail banking concept that springboards off the revolution inherent in mobile banking.

“We believe that you will always be banking but never at a bank,” King said Monday in an interview.

“Banking is changing from somewhere you go to something you do,” added King. “Mobile is a disrupter.”

King said Movenbank would go live on the Web on Oct. 1 and he expected it to formally launch in Q2 2012.

“This will be a reboot of banking that rethinks all the relationships,” King said.

He elaborated that he saw Movenbank competing with Google Wallet for the mobile banking customer.

But he insisted there are huge opportunities in financial services that are triggered by loss of customer goodwill.

“Customers say they want a different banking relationship. Customers choose a bank because they feel they have to have an account. But there’s a lot of friction in those relationships. The trust in banks has been eroded,” he said.

This lack of trust, suggested King, opens a door for innovators who rethink financial services. “Maybe we can get in under the radar and pick off a million customers.”

As for credit unions, King ominously predicted: “The sub-$1 billion credit unions may have a lot of trouble navigating this new world. They will have big challenges.”